Political scientist and media critic

March 30, 2012

I have a new post for Columbia Journalism Review answering media coverage about the effectiveness of fact-checking. Here's how it begins:

Politics today seemingly has more fact-checking than ever before. As a result, reporters are asking a new question: Does fact-checking work?

At the national level, USA Today's Martha T. Moore described it as "an article of faith" among fact-checkers that "factually accurate information is something voters want and need, and they provide plenty of it." Unfortunately, she writes, "[w]hat they can't seem to do is get politicians to stop saying things that aren't true"...

A similar concern was expressed in an analysis piece by Henry J. Gomez titled "Even in an age of fact-check journalism, the political whopper lives" that was published Saturday in The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. As T.C. Brown, CJR's Ohio Swing States Project correspondent, notes, the piece centers on Ohio Treasurer and GOP Senate candidate Josh Mandel, whom Gomez notes "has received three of PolitiFact Ohio's seven most recent Pants on Fire rulings." In total, six of his fourteen rated statements since 2010 "have been deemed Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire."

"Why do they do it?" Gomez asks. "Those who study politics and communications say the consequences appear to be minimal, at least for the liars."

March 29, 2012

March 22, 2012

My new post for Columbia Journalism Review examines how the press has covered the Romney/Etch-a-Sketch controversy. Here how it begins:

Yesterday, Etch-a-Sketch became the media’s favorite metaphor for Mitt Romney’s ideological flexibility. But the iconic children’s toy is an equally good representation of the media’s tendency to draw the picture it wants of our political candidates.

March 16, 2012

March 08, 2012

Why did Democrats do so poorly in the 2010 elections? The median academic forecast was 44 to 45 seats (PDF). However, Republicans significantly outperformed expectations in picking up 66 seats in the House and six seats in the Senate.

After the election, John Sides, Eric McGhee, and I found that Democratic incumbents who voted the most controversial legislation of the 2008-2010 period -- TARP, the stimulus, cap-and-trade, and health care reform -- performed significantly worse than those who voted no on those bills. Seth Masket and Steven Greenereached a similar conclusion about the effects of supporting health care reform on the vote share received by the most conservative House Democrats who ran for re-election.

Afterward, we joined forces Voltron-style and produced a new article (gated; ungated) that is forthcoming in a special issue of American Politics Research on the 2010 election. In it, we show that the roll call effect on vote share was driven by health care reform. Democratic incumbents who voted yes performed significantly worse than those who did not. Even among a more comparable set of members and districts that we isolate using statistical matching procedures, the estimated effect of support is -5.8 percentage points. We then provide simulation evidence suggesting that Democrats would win approximately 25 more seats if those in competitive districts had voted no, which accounts for the gap between the academic forecasts and the observed outcomes.*

Why did health care reform have such dramatic effects? Individual-level survey data shows that health care reform supporters were seen as more liberal and thus more ideologically distant from voters.

Using mediation analysis, we then show that perceived ideological distance appears to be the key mechanism linking incumbent support for health care reform with individual-level opposition among their constituents. In short, support for health care reform is associated with greater perceived ideological distance, which in turn is associated with a reduced likelihood of supporting the incumbent.

Going forward, the implications for 2012 are less clear. As Sides notes, the economy is the dominant issue in the presidential race and most of the vulnerable Democratic incumbents in Congress lost in 2010. Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see whether challengers can successfully target any remaining Democrats in competitive districts or states who supported health care reform. Will it hurt the party again?

Of course, none of this is to say that Democrats should have declined to pursue health care reform, which was arguably their party's top policy priority after the 2008 election. Parties are frequently willing to pay an electoral penalty to enact their preferred policy agenda. What our analysis shows, however, is that the costs of passing the legislation were significant.

* As Kevin Collins and Jonathan Chait point out, it's possible that news coverage and GOP ads would have focused on the other roll call votes and that they would have had correspondingly greater effects on vulnerable Democrats. In that case, the net effect of supporting health care reform on Democratic losses in 2010 might have been reduced or eliminated. For more on these counterfactuals, see the responses from John Sides and Eric McGhee. See also Seth Masket on how some media coverage has distorted our findings.

March 05, 2012

My new CJR column examines coverage of Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio's birther press conference as a case study in how news reporting can reinforce misperceptions:

Last Tuesday, the New America Foundation released a report (PDF) I co-authored with Georgia State’s Jason Reifler on how to most effectively combat misperceptions (summarized here at CJR). Two days later, some of the nation’s press corps decided to illustrate what not to do instead.